


Consonance

by wargoddess



Category: Wraeththu - Storm Constantine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-20
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 16:30:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/541537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Pell and Cal's saga plays out at center stage, a quieter mirror of their drama occurs behind the scenes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Inception is a great, whopping pain in the ass. Being treated like dirt in the Forale-house, by hara who happened to draw the short straws. All the fuss and bother of the Harhune, that solemn ritual of having someone slice you up and bleed on you. Then three days of grotesque, nightmarish transformation while your body tosses out its old useless bits and rudely shoves the new into place. It's barbaric, not to mention inconvenient, and someone really ought to come up with a better way. 

But there was no better way, when I decided to become Wraeththu, and so I put up with it. I was fortunate to be well-connected, so to speak. It meant that I had a proper inception, and not the quasi-rape that so many others endured. I know it could have been worse. I shouldn't complain. But... damn, I'm getting ahead of myself.

In my town, the changes and degeneration of society didn't bother us all that much; we'd degenerated pretty well on our own long before the coming of Wraeththukind. It had been a mining town, once, but then the economy dried up and the bad times came. The mines closed, the adults mostly became alcoholics, and the town took on the character of tarnished silver---dull and murky and shameful to look upon. The young ones like me, of course, were perfectly fine with it. We'd hated the mines, and dreaded the time when we would take our fathers' place in them. The bad times meant freedom, and if that freedom came with hunger and a dead-end future, what did it mean to us? We had endless time to hang about, smoke stolen cigarettes, screw ourselves mindless, and pontificate about the meaning of life. Others might say we were aimless, lost, but I think that in our pathetic little way we were groping toward something higher. We were teenagers. We thought we were immortal already.

It was Pradz who first gave me the idea. He knew me for what I was, you see, the moment he heard me sing. I'd like to think he was in love with me, but in my more cynical moments I suspect it was only the music. He told me all about the Wraeththu, what snippets his cousin Kurret had brought back from the city. He was fond of quoting Kurret, whom he thought of as sophisticated. Very easily-impressed, was my Pradz.

"They're a bit like animals," he said in hushed tones. There was no need for him to whisper; we were alone in the old abandoned foreman's shack where I took him, sometimes, to make love. "Sleek and beautiful, with eyes like predators. But you can't see that at first; it's just the beauty you notice. Like women, but smoother, softer... like men but sharp. And they have magic---song-magic, Garnie! You'd fit right in."

"Why would I want to be some kind of animal?" I asked, stifling a laugh. "Animals don't sing, they howl."

He clouted me on the shoulder and I thumped him back out of habit. "Don't be an ass! The animal is _inside_ them."

"And how would you know? Have you ever seen one?"

He paused for a moment, and an expression that was almost fear fluttered across his face. "I don't know," he said, with a wondering quaver in his voice. That, of course, was when I decided to become Wraeththu.

All who become Wraeththu are meant to; if they do not find the path themselves, it will find them. A few discreet inquiries of those adults not too far gone to hold a conversation---but far gone enough that they thought nothing of the subject matter---revealed the information I sought: high in the mountains, near a mineral-lake. I would find them there, where the shores were limestone, said the old woman who'd once run the town library; where springs bubbled up with a smell like rotting eggs and stone monsters guarded the path. (She didn't say it precisely that way, of course, but you must forgive my liberty. I am a singer, after all. It is the meaning, and not the exact wording, which matters most.)

I did not tell my mother I was going. She was the manager of the liquor store and therefore still had enough money to lend some substance to her memories of the way things had been. We lived in a fine, if small, house, with a white picket fence. Things had been tense between us ever since I'd begun smoking and wearing strange clothing and going to the mountain shack with Pradz and others. I loved her in a vague sort of way, and I suppose she'd at least loved me until puberty. Both of us had always known it would happen this way, however, because she had never understood my music. When she'd decided to punish me once, she took away my guitar. I discovered the intricacies of my own unaccompanied voice and never asked for it back. So I wrote her a note, then slipped away in the small hours of the night with a little pack containing all my wordly goods, some bottled water, and five peanut butter sandwiches.

Pradz, of course, insisted on accompanying me right up until the night that I left. Then, when I threw pebbles at his window to signal him, he slipped down the vine-trellis and stammered and hawed so much that I finally said, "Fuck it, I'll go alone." His eyes grew huge at that. I mustn't, he said. Some of the Wraeththu truly were animals; they could smell a boy like me, and sometimes they would _do things_ to him instead of incept him. But even then I knew: nothing so prosaic as a dangerous journey, or even hungry Wraeththu jabberwocks, would ever do me in. I was destined for greater things. Pradz knew it too, as I've mentioned. He had heard my music, and known it for what it was long before I did. The magic is in humans as well as Wraeththu; always has been. But it's so much harder to reach, when one is only half a being.

"Goodbye, Garnet," Pradz said, with great solemnity. I felt that he spoke for the species.

***

The journey, all things considered, wasn't as bad as Pradz had made out. I saw no one else, even when I kept to trails that should surely have been well-travelled if I was heading toward a city of gregarious beasts. The sandwiches ran out, of course, and my water too, but I had stretched both for as long as I could. It was enough to get me there, though not in the proud state I'd hoped to be in. I wanted to burst in among the Wraeththu, dazzling them all with my beauty and my music. But three days of hunger and two of dehydration made me hoarse and gaunt and giddy. I laughed when I scrabbled down the last of the trail and saw the monsters the old librarian had described: bloated, twisted monoliths, grown from the minerals of the soil. Just warped crystals, but I greeted them in my croaking, parched voice nevertheless. Fortunately someone found me then, or I might have gone on yapping at rocks until I died.

I awakened in a cool chamber like something out of a foreign storybook---silk drapings and shiny things and pillows, everywhere. Something cool and clammy was on half my face, and in the remnant of my delirium I thought it was a bat, sitting on me and lapping at my cuts to drink the blood. I yelled and swatted it away.

"Be still," said a voice, and my hand was seized and shoved back down. "Bats are warm, little fool, and the ones around here eat fruit. You've done enough damage already."

It was not the fact that my benefactor had apparently read my mind which snapped me out of the delirium. It was his voice. The songs in it, the songs! Like mercury, shining and beaded; like molten glass. It awoke in me an instant hunger, far more fierce than the half-aware yearning I'd had before. If all the Wraeththu wore their magic so gloriously about them, I would never again feel alone, once I became one of them. I had been the painter amidst the blind, the dreamer amongst the awake, but _this_ was my pack, my pride. I was home.

I opened my eyes and took my first look at one of my new brethren. He was a tall, painfully slim wraith dressed like the mating of a dungeon torturer with a harem-maiden, all tattered silks and leather straps. His hair tickled my face, when he bent over me with more annoyance than concern in his eyes. 

"There, now. Have some more water; you need it. It's going to take us a week to get you right again." He sighed, sounding aggrieved and soothing all at once.

"He's getting stronger pretty fast," said another glittering voice, from beyond a heavy drape that blocked off half the room to create the illusion of privacy. Then this one poked his face around the hanging: not as tall, pixie-beautiful, half boy and half sylph. "Orien said it would be another two days, maybe three, and his health should have returned by then."

"I'm not speaking of his health," snapped my mind-reader. "Look at him! He was beautiful, but now..." He looked at me and glowered. "Honestly, coming into the mountains without enough water! I'm going to run out of balm, trying to un-crack those lips. I suppose it can't be helped. No one should go through their Harhune looking like you do, now. Welcome to Saltrock, by the way."

***

Thus began my journey down (up? around?) the path of Wraeththu. I recovered over the next few days, in both health and beauty, but the scathing comments of my host got worse instead of better. It was all right, though; I understood what was happening, and why it was necessary. Flick (the short fellow) explained some of it, but I didn't really need the explanation. I didn't care what had to be done; I knew it would happen as it should, and my task was simply to let it. I suffered in the Forale-house, as was proper. Seel (my host) told me of the past, and the mutant who began it all. Orien, the shaman who seemed more beggar than mystic, clarified the present for me. Wraeththu was a new thing, learning and growing. Those who could help it grow best were being drawn to it, and that was doubtless why I had come---but as I was, I was unready. I needed to be broken down and rebuilt, and the Harhune was the method by which this was done. Initially.

As for the future, though, that was left to another to frame for me. He did it with a dramatic flare, appearing suddenly to be the hienama at my Harhune. Seel muttered irritably that he was getting sick of this sort of thing, but Orien shushed him. I was simply in awe. He was so tall, so inhuman and... _more._ I could think of no other word to describe him than that. He was as different from the other hara I'd met as hara were from men. His hair was like flame, his eyes stars; for the first time I was frightened, knowing that his blood would be coming into me. The fear was half-eclipsed by covetousness, however. It was not his blood I wanted.

He didn't speak, throughout the procedure. Orien performed the invocations. I don't think I heard a word of it; my ears were straining for something else. They would have been pricked forward like a cat's if they could have been, but there was nothing to hear. He knew what I wanted, and he refused to give it to me, smiling, mocking. Just a word! I thought. Even a sigh would have been enough---it would have given me that first hint, that first flavor, of the song that I had come here, into Wraeththu, to find.

He knew I was not ready, of course. It was why he held it back from me then, and for so much longer afterward (although I have no doubt he enjoyed the hell out of tormenting me, too). I was still human, though I wouldn't be for much longer. Althaia grabbed me in its teeth and chewed on me for a while, and by the time it spat me out he was, damnably, gone. "Perhaps he will send a part of himself back for a visit," Orien suggested, before he soothed me back and introduced me to the new instrument my body had become. "He has done so before..." But I knew I was not quite that important. 

Still, the gauntlet had been thrown down, and I have never been one to turn away a challenge. I would have to spend the next few years journeying, learning, preparing myself, before he would give me what I wanted. But I would have it. The Wraeththu had no idea what a pushy little bastard they'd just let in among their ranks.

Wait for me, Thiede! I'm coming for you, as fast as I can.


	2. Chapter 2

Later, I was never quite certain how many years passed, in the interim. Such paltry things as the passage of time didn't concern me much. I was too busy learning, growing, exploring the fullness of Wraeththu! There was so much joy in me, in those early years.

Inception had done its work on me, stripping the last fat and awkwardness of puberty from my body all at once. Now I was tall and graceful as I could never have been as a human, slender and deft. "Chiselled," Orien often called me, when we lay together with the sparks of our communion still glowing on our skins. I laughed, thinking he was making a pun of my name. He did not smile.

He knew I would not stay. He taught me as much as he could, however, helping me raise my caste all the way to Brynie. It was for him that I sang my first song since my inception. I had been avoiding it, actually, terrified that the physical stresses of the changing might have damaged my vocal chords, or something. He only petted away my fear, and reminded me that althaia was a crucible, not a cauldron; the changing could only burn away my flaws, not warp them. Did not the rest of my body reflect this? So hesitantly, then joyously, I sang to him in the darkness of his little house, filling its walls and corridors with my exultation. How right he had been! Where before my song had been mere voice, now the very air reverberated with the colors of my spirit, silver and rose and the blue of the evening sky, given shape and power as I could never have imagined. It was as if I had learned to share breath without touching. 

Orien told me very solemnly that I had a gift, and would need to take great care not to stunt its growth. Then he bid me farewell.

From Saltrock, I journeyed south, toward the very border of the poisoned wasteland called Olathe. I don't know why I went that way. It was filled with half-mad, half-dead humans and a few half-hara (those whose inceptions had gone badly) who weren't much better off. They avoided me, perhaps repelled by my wholeness. In retrospect, I believe I needed the starkness and desolation that I found there, after the strange peaceful beauty of Saltrock, to remind me that there was still much work to be done, on the world and on myself. 

It spurred me back north in a fever to learn. I drifted, for a while, from settlement to settlement, tribe to tribe. My voice was my password; I was an itinerant singer, and even the most hostile of tribes opened their doors to me in payment for my song. Not all the tribes were hostile, or openly so. Among the Kakkahar I dined on delicacies every day and slept pleasured by Aralids at night. In the twilights, I learned. I had to, for their leader Lianvis was the first har I ever met who could steal my song from the air. He came to listen on my first night there, as I performed for the tribe, and nearly sucked me into himself; he was his own private black hole. I managed to break free of the vortex of him, but only just. Afterward he apologized quite cheerfully, and told me that I really should raise my caste a level or so if I was going to be singing to strangers. Naturally he offered to help me do it, and with only a little hesitation, I accepted. After all, who better to teach me how to defend myself against the monsters that lived out there?

And so it went, with every tribe I visited. I would offer to sing for them, and in return they would give me something I needed---supplies, occult knowledge, aruna with an especially skilled or powerful har. The supplies fed my body, the knowledge my mind, the aruna my soul. I grew, changed as I had always known I must, and my voice changed as well. Now I was Pyralisit. Now I could set fires with a harsh note, shatter eardrums, heal with a hum. Now my colors began to reflect my namesake, in jewel-tones of amethyst and topaz and, of course, garnet. The Irraka, pathetic hara who lived in a dead town, were in awe of me. They taught me worship, and folly. Among the Froia, where I dressed in concealing garments and dared to flirt with their Braga, I learned first restraint and then abandon when the Braga took me, on a pallet in the middle of the floor while dancers gyrated around us. I travelled for a while with a group of gypsies called the Zigane, where I learned mystery from women and darkness from a beautiful black-haired har who tore at me when we coupled and spoke in a husky growl that was the most sensual voice I'd ever heard. His throat had been cut, at some point a few years before, and the women told me he was still healing.

Never, though, did I ever lose sight of my true goal. I heard rumors of Thiede, from time to time---visiting here, putting his finger in there. It was not a trail, as such, because he left none; for all I knew he teleported from place to place, following no discernible pattern. I followed anyhow, knowing that at some point we would meet again. I knew it as surely as I had known before going to Saltrock that I would become har. Some things are simply meant to be.

The Braga had given me a letter, which would provide me safe conduct through Varr territory. I considered visiting the fabled Galhea, but decided against it; something drew me onward, northward. So I journeyed through a land of war and torment, where the only towns I saw were dead or peopled by furtive groups of Varr escapees. "You're lucky," one of these told me solemnly when I dined with him in a filthy, leaning hut. "Terzian is no longer in Galhea, or even your letter would not protect you. Some Varrish captain would want to make a gift of you, for in the old days he took beautiful hara like you to make sons."

"Where has Terzian gone, then?"

"Into the forest of mirrors," replied my companion. I was not sure if he---or even she---was human or har, under all the dirt. "Into the hands of the Gelaming. Ponclast, they say, will make war on them soon."

I knew only a little of tribal politics; so much of it was beneath me. Yet I knew that while the Varrs were mighty in the old ways, with their armies and weapons, the Gelaming had grown strong in the new. And had not the new ways been proven better, in the dominance of Wraeththu over man? 

But I would learn, soon, that the old ways do not die easily.

Fulminir is surrounded, for a hundred miles in all directions, by death. I knew that I was headed in the right direction, as I journeyed, because of this. For days at a stretch I saw nothing living---skeletal trees, the corpses of animals decaying with not even insects to feed on them. The only people I saw were impaled or crucified on wooden frames, planted at random throughout the wastes. I could feel some great weight tugging at my spirit, its pressure increasing as I drew closer, like the force of gravity as one approaches the lowest point of a pit. Was there an ant-lion at its center, waiting to drag me under? The one time I dared to raise my voice in song, it was tinny and pallid, and the echoes were snatched away almost as soon as the notes faded. I did not try again. Such was the power of Fulminir, sucking in all the life and souls around it, feeding on the land like a great black tick. So ominous was this feeling, as I grew closer, that even my infamous confidence faltered. For the first time since I'd left my hometown, I thought about turning back. 

But I could no more have done that than give up drinking water, or quit breathing. Whatever darkness lay in that terrible place, I knew that Thiede would be there as well, and this knowledge forced me onward despite my fear. And when Fulminir finally came into view, I witnessed a miracle. Smoke, tinged sickly yellow and glowing blue-green, billowed from within the barrier of its black walls. That barrier, I saw, had been breached: there was a great gaping tear in the citadel's flank. Fulminir had been wounded, mortally, and the smoke was the last of its lifeblood, flowing out. No fleas had left the carcass, as far as I could tell, so I picked up my pace, curiosity and wonder overwhelming fear.

Within, the streets were full of frozen horrors: scenes of cannibalism like waxwork, torture and dementia like photographs. There were no songs in that place. Perhaps there had been once, when it was a place of men, but no longer. There were voices, of a sort---or rather, the echoes of voices which had seeped into the black stone. When I listened carefully, I heard cries of anguish, screams and hisses. Wailing, sometimes, and hopeless pleas. But such things are not songs. I don't know what they can be called, but they were inimical to me, and finally I put my hands over my ears as I stumbled through the silent streets. It did not stop me from hearing the sounds, but it helped me keep my grip on sanity. 

It also helped that I could feel the presence of others, not too far off; bright beings who roamed the darkness with me, seeking out its most damaged prisoners and cruelest wardens and dispensing succor or justice as required. Not denizens of this hell but fellow invaders, and the ones who had broken its power. Gelaming. Even as I realized it I found myself slipping into the shadows, traveling the emptiest streets to avoid them. I did not want to see them, not yet. Their light was incomplete, somehow---too pure, too perfect. In this dark place I needed something more than that... something more whole. I found it in a courtyard near the center of the city, in one of the few places that the newly-freed sun had reached.

He sat on the lip of a well, solemn and sober. Beyond him, in a building that was half castle and half dungeon, I could hear Gelaming commiserating on the horrors they'd found. No one knew we were out here, for which I suspect we were both grateful. 

He watched me come out of the shadows, simply gazing at me for a long and assessing moment. I was trembling, in spite of myself; I'd walked for hours nonstop to get here, and the ravages of traversing Fulminir's streets were plain on my face. I was not at all my usual beautiful, arrogant self. Not that I could have been, before him. I was keenly aware of my own unworthiness. He smiled just a little as if hearing my thought, sadly.

"Not yet," he said, and I rocked back on my heels. Not because his voice had startled me, a real sound amid all the ghost-whispers of the place, or even because of what he'd said, but simply for the sound of his voice. Layers upon layers folded and compacted, harmonizing and vibrating against one another so intensely that I could feel the heat of him, feel how carefully he held the fire back so that hara around him would not scream and fall with their eardrums bursting and smoking. And the moment I heard it, I understood exactly what he meant. I was not ready. If only two spoken words had shaken me so badly, how could I bear more? For the first time in my entire life I tasted despair, and it was bitter, bitter. 

Thiede watched me impassively for a moment, then rose and came over, graceful as a queen. I felt the whole front side of my body warm with the heat he radiated. He lifted a hand and touched one of the tears on my cheek. I had not been aware of weeping.

"Take this, to tide you over. This much you can have now."

I have heard the sharing of breath sometimes described as falling into a pit, or going into a cavern. There were elements of that, in this. I stood on a plain, as a towering funnel of force and color approached me. It was a tornado of fire and light, and within its howling chaos I heard the first glittering notes of the true Song, the Song that could move worlds, the power that he kept hidden beneath his surface and which I wanted so badly, yet feared. It was too much for me, you see, but although I knew he could have taken me into himself, could have annihiliated me, he kept it safe. He touched me and swept me up into the outer rings of the funnel, and instead of being spun to pieces or charred to death I was enveloped within purest warmth. He spun with me and around me and into me and when it was over, I wept anew. I was alone in the courtyard; the silence had returned. I knew I would not see him again for a very long time.


	3. Chapter 3

After Fulminir, I made my way eastward. Here, civilization consisted only of splinter groups and small tribes, all of them trying to find their own way along the path. I was not surprised to find that what I had witnessed in Fulminir was the stuff of legend, and perhaps a turning point for our race---the end of the dark, the beginning of the path of light. Something about this troubled me, touched me with a niggling sense of urgency, but I gave it little more thought than that. If it was a mystery, it was not for me to solve.

One of the more stable small tribes was the Sulh, traders in various magical and medicinal nostrums (not to be confused with the Uigenna, whose nostrums were far less savory). They took me in when I staggered out of the Varr lands bedraggled and muttering, my beauty sorely diminished and my songs garbled. Beautiful, haughty hara are the Sulh, all but glowing with magic---so much magic that many dance along the edge of madness. This made them the perfect tribe to help me recover, so I spent a time with them---perhaps a few months, perhaps a few years. Among the Sulh, it did not matter.

In their herb-gardens, surrounded by fragrant vines, I meditated on what had happened in the Varrs' deathplace. Had I truly met Thiede? I was not certain. Perhaps my mind had simply conjured a vision of what it most desired, in an effort to protect itself. In pulling myself back together, however, I discovered a new clarity to my thinking, a greater strength of will which the Sulh helped me focus. I began to sing again, and Thiede's fire was in my voice. Whether I had truly seen him or only imagined him, that brief journey into hell had set me back on my own personal path. I was now Algomalid.

The Sulh's small settlement had a port, and from here I took a ship further east. Here were the great, spreading countries that formed the heart of Wraeththu civilization, newly wrested from man but already old in culture. The Thaine I passed through quickly; I had had enough of that sort of madness in Megalithica. In Ferike, however, I slowed, and began to regain a measure of my old pride. These were people who appreciated an artist! For my songs, I was showered with riches, and even invited to perform for the ruling family, the Jaels. They had crystals which they used to record music, but they discovered that my songs could not be recorded without severe distortions. The crystals were aruna-powered, and after much spirited debate (Ferike hara love such things), the crafters who made them came to the conclusion that the powers contained within the crystals were too akin to the substance of my music. My song had become a kind of auditory Grissecon.

Yet my heart was leaden. Despite all my progress, I felt no nearer to that unknowable point of readiness than I had been previously. I also began to realize that I was no longer certain of what I wanted, should that mythical day ever come. I had once thought, looking at Thiede, "This one is the source of all the music that Wraeththu will ever produce. I will get close to him and make him sing and learn those songs and make them mine." Simple greed. Now, however, I had learned that no song is ever truly complete, no music is finite. Whatever Thiede could teach me would not be the be-all and end-all of beauty and magic. Yet my hunger to find him was just as intense, if not more so, as it had been on that first night after my inception. I had lain writhing in soume delight beneath Orien, my mind on other planes of pleasure, and it had been Thiede's face which filled my thoughts.

It took something unusual to jolt me out of my growing complacency and make me face the truth. Two unusual things, really: death, and a woman.

I'd thought the latter extinct, frankly, but I found one in Saphrax (the Ferike port), as I sat by the water and stared across it and wondered what to do next. A har came and sat down beside me, and I was already formulating a response to what I thought would be the inevitable pick-up line when the har, without ceremony, pushed me off the pier.

I could not swim. Don't laugh! I'd grown up in a mining town, for goodness' sake, and spent my earlier years wandering a huge continent of landlocked countries. I'd done all I could to further my own artistic and spiritual growth; it had never occurred to me to invest in floaties. So I spluttered, panicked too much to use my abilities to save myself, spluttered more, and promptly drowned.

And then the most curious thing happened.

I floated free of my body without realizing it. In one instant I was splashing madly, swallowing gallons of seawater, and in the next I felt myself calm, drifting lightly as if I'd suddenly figured the whole swimming thing out after all. But I floated in air, not water, and below me I could see myself, floating facedown. The har who'd killed me still sat on the railing, checking a timepiece casually. I could see, abruptly, that this strange, murderous creature was no more har than I was human. Quintessential femininity shone from her, almost through her skin, so intense that I floated near like an insect drawn to light, fascinated enough to forget that I had just died. What songs this woman could sing, I suspected, if I could only find the ears to hear her!

She looked up at where I floated and smiled. "You have a terribly one-track mind, Garnet, but I suppose that's just as well, or you'd have gone elsewhere by now. We'll call it focus. Hang on a moment; this is the first time I've ever tried this."

And suddenly my consciousness slammed downward, stunned and painfully constricted. I tried to scream and felt my throat dilate, my chest heave. I was flesh again.

For some moments I lay where I was, gasping and dazed, my skin oddly sensitive to the minute discomforts of the grit beneath my back and buttocks, the heat radiating up from the concrete, the matching warmth of the sun above. I was reminded, fleetingly, of Thiede.

The woman got up and walked around me, tapping her lips with a finger, smiling in a pleased and faintly avaricious way. "Lovely, lovely if I do say so myself. Not bad for a freshman exercise. Feeling better?"

I had begun to recover, and naturally the first thing to return was my sense of indignation. "The Ferike are... enlightened, as hara go," I gasped, "but only to a point. They're no more... tolerant of humans who try to... kill hara than any other sensible tribe."

"It's fortunate, then, that I'm not human. And I didn't _try_ to kill you, I _did_ kill you. And now that that's over with..." She hopped back up on the railing and swung her legs, which were too short to reach the ground. "Come, now, Garnie, you're smarter than this. Just because Orien's the one who began your education doesn't mean you have to trap yourself within the traditional, the tried-and-true. Experiment! Are you an artist, or aren't you?"

Enough of my strength had returned that I sat up, gingerly. My mind could not wrap itself around what had happened; it simply took in the details and I would make sense of them later. I was dry. My skin gleamed, smooth and fine, all of my small blemishes and scars erased---including my inception scar. I would marvel at this later; for now I simply blinked at her. She gave a sigh of exasperation, then began ticking points off on her fingers. "You wanted 'something' from him at first sight. You've shaped your whole life around finding him and becoming worthy of him. Every time you orgasm it's his name you're crying in your mind, and not that of whoever you're with." 

She put her hands down and glared at me. I stared back in stupid silence, and she rolled her eyes, speaking to the heavens. "Honestly---female-ness shoved into all of them, and does it show?" She gave an exasperated sigh.

I still had no idea what she was going on about, but I began to get angry. "Now, listen here---"

"I am listening just fine, thank you; you're the one who's not. Self-exploration is the first lesson, isn't it? You've forgotten it, altogether. What are all your instincts telling you? Hmm? What did they tell you, on the night you first saw him?" She leaned forward. "It's not his _song_ you want, is it?"

And abruptly, all my confusion vanished.

I had been a fool. Right in essence, but wrong in the critical details. It was not Orien's fault; he had taught me as he had countless other new hara, and he'd passed on the lesson that Thiede had taught him in their younger years. Thiede, who had still been engaged in his own development then, who without the support of the civilization he'd created (for they were too young to help him) had taken years---decades---to truly heal himself of the scars of his youth. I had been taught that love was the remnant of human foolishness, the root of most jealousy and selfishness and misery. Wraeththu could love, but not as men did. We should be above such things.

But I was not. And he was not. 

"Which means that none of you are," said my strange female companion, apparently plucking the thoughts right out of my head. " _He_ finally figured that out a while ago, although he still hates to admit it. Typical. And now that you've finally caught up, I think perhaps you should hurry."

"Hurry?" I blinked stupidly again. "Why?"

She threw up her hands. "I'm not telling you everything. You're not that important. A courtesy, so to speak; from one race to the ruler of another. We owe him, but only to a point. I only told you this much because there's not much time left. And because you knew all of this already; you just needed a push. It was time. Now that you're back on the right path, I suggest you take that boat, there." She nodded toward a dainty little schooner a few docks away. "It's going to Immanion."

I looked toward it, startled. Ships that went to Immanion never advertised it openly. The Gelaming were jealous of their beautiful city, and preferred that non-Gelaming come only by invitation. I'd been vaguely thinking about making my way there, but hadn't known how to begin; now the way had been opened. "It seems I owe you my thanks, then. But who are you? Why have---" But I trailed off, knowing even before I turned that she was gone.

"Kate," her voice drifted back in my thoughts, and then I was alone. In the water below the pier, only a faint pale shape beneath the surface of the water attested to what had happened, and as I watched, it sank out of sight and away.

Ferike merchants are remarkably tolerant of naked, penniless, shining hara who come into their shops. The one I encountered didn't raise an eyebrow, but took a measuring look at me and went to gather some clothes that he thought would fit. He presented them to me, along with a small pouch of money, and when I stammered my gratitude he waved it off. "A pleasure," he said, smiling at me sidelong. "Not every day I get to ogle a beautiful Nahir-Nuri fresh off the path. You'll be heading to Immanion, I presume?"

"Yes," I replied, a bit startled to realize that he had indeed guessed my caste correctly.

"Shame. Wish you could stay. But it's just as well. You'll show those Gelaming they aren't the only angels in the world." He winked at me, and I left his shop smiling my old smile and walking my old walk. He was right, of course; there are many kinds of angels. Some of them sing like water, and others burn like fire. It was high time two of them got together.


	4. Chapter 4

Immanion has been called the jewel of Wraeththu cities, and that is not an exaggeration. As I stepped off the ship's gangplank, I felt as if I had stepped out of one world -- a raw one, still wet with the deathblood of humanity -- and into a world thousands of years into the future. Here, the old world was just a memory, something for the dustiest of history books. Congestion and filth had never existed, in this world. Even the poorest harlings never went to bed hungry here.

I felt the imbalance of it keenly with my newly-honed senses, as I walked through its whitestone-paved streets. Yet at the same time I could feel the imminence of change. Darkness was coming, slowly but inexorably, but when it arrived it would be sudden, cataclysmic -- and perfect. I would have to hurry.

Getting into Phaonica would be the greatest problem. The palace was as vast as it was magnificent, and the minor functionaries who controlled access to its inner chambers amounted to a small and well-entrenched army. Everyone wanted a chance to see the Tigron or the Tigrina, and even though I had absolutely no interest in either of them, I still wasn't going to be able to just walk in. But to wait in queue for the chance to have an audience with one of the higher functionaries -- who _might_ allow me to speak with a member of the upper echelon -- would take weeks, if not years.

But if my recent caste ascension -- indeed, my entire life -- had taught me nothing, it was that will could move worlds, when it needed to. I was a small player in the grand game; that much I understood and accepted. Yet my role would be, in some ways, perhaps the most profound. It was _necessary,_ and that meant that I would gain access to Phaonica's inner chambers by some means or other.

In the end, however, it proved easier than anticipated. I was expected, after all, and if the staff of Phaonica had been given no specific arrival date for me, it was a testament to their competence that they found me anyhow. I was loitering in the main public hall, trying to come up with some means of getting past the guards, when an exquisite har with hair like white gold came out of a side-entrance and floated (there is no other way to describe it) over to me.

"You are Garnet?" He asked this very quietly, as if others would overhear and care. 

"Yes," I replied in some surprise. Beautiful hara murmuring to me was nothing new, but beautiful strange hara who knew my name was, and I said as much. The har favored me with a frosty smile.

"I am Velaxis. We have been forewarned of your coming -- yours, and one other's. You, fortunately, are the more welcome of the two. Come; I will take you to the inner sanctum."

He led me back through the side-door, darting his eyes from side to side with a great show of alertness and tension; no one paid any attention to us. Beyond was a completely different picture from the public hall; yet another world, this one revealed only to Phaonica staff and dignitaries. Here the halls were crystal instead of marble, the floors lightly carpeted so that the only sound was the faint stir of silk and creak of leather from the clothing of the hara we passed. In spite of the visual feast of Gelaming flesh around me (and there was so very much of it; Gelaming wear very little when they can get away with it), I barely noticed anything. I was wire-taut inside. Was it fear? Anticipation? Perhaps something of both.

To distract myself, I focused on my companion, who had not deigned to speak to me since we'd left the public hall. "If I may ask, what is your status here?"

"Assistant to the Hegemony." He glanced back at me, sizing me up. "I was once personal assistant to Thiede, but he decided that my competence could be better-used elsewhere, for the good of Wraeththu."

"How interesting," I replied vaguely, abruptly troubled despite all my spiritual preparation. Was this what I would become, now that I'd come here? A secretary? Perhaps a whore?

"I like to think it is, at least a little." His tone told me that he thought it was extremely interesting and that he thought me a fool for not recognizing that fact. We stopped, then, having reached another door; this one required a special key, which Velaxis used and then gave to me. "Beyond."

I pocketed the key, watching him leave in a flutter of silk. When he was out of sight and the hall empty, I opened the door and stepped within.

Another world, this one Thiede's. I could not make out the shape of the space; it might have been a vast hall or a tiny room, enclosed or open to the sky. In its center was a place of light, and as I went toward it I began to hear music. Music like nothing I had ever heard before: high and rhythmic with an undercurrent of low sonorousness, vibrating in layers of tremolo. A song, in colors for which I had no name, like the music one hears in dreams. A song with lyrics of an elemental language beyond syntax and vocabulary, elevated only to the purest essence of thought and meaning. _Come_ , sang that song, wistful, demanding. _I have waited so long for you._

He waited for me in the center of the chamber, on a circular plinth wreathed in veils of white and blue light: an altar. He lay upon it like an offering, like the statue of a god brought to life for some arcane ceremony of blessing. I parted the veils and gazed down at him and he smiled up at me and I thought fleetingly, _If I am to be a whore, I will be the happiest one in the world._

"Not that," he said, reaching up to take my hand. He pulled me down to him, and somehow I had become as naked as he. He cupped my face, stroked it, and gazed into my eyes, searching. "Never that, my jewel. So many others dance to my tune... I control them all because I must, to make Wraeththu great, but you I have never forced. You have come here, willingly, and that means everything to me."

I felt as if I had been here, having conversations like this, forever. All my fears had gone; I pressed close to him and found without surprise that beyond the fire, beneath the power, he was just har. "Once you would have scorned that sort of sentiment."

"Once, yes. But so many others have shown me that I was wrong. I can't control everything. Soon I will lose control of all of it, and others will take my place. I have always known this would happen, but..." He faltered, and abruptly I realized that he was afraid. I took him into my arms and bent him back. He sighed and relaxed, closing his eyes and leaning his head back so that his long neck gleamed beneath me, vulnerable. He had not been held in a painfully long time.

"We are not so very different from men," I told him, touching my lips to his neck in between words. "We have the same problems, the same weaknesses, the same gifts. We are just more honest about those things; we must be. You above all."

"Yes." He sighed and opened his eyes, then half-smiled. "He's coming. I don't know when it will happen -- tomorrow, next year, a decade from now -- but I think it will be sooner rather than later. Much as I would like to host your seed... you are the safer vessel, now. Now that you can be. I envy you the experience."

I could not believe that he had not done this before. "Surely you were the first -- "

"First in many things, but never this. It requires a level of abandon that I have never permitted myself, lovely Garnet." He touched my face, here and there, as if he could get a better sense of my looks through contact. "If not because of the power involved, then because of... other things."

His thoughts were open to me, now, and I beheld an unimaginable vista of plans and counterplans, visions of the future that would have veered off into horror if not for him. The cruelties that had been necessary, which he'd been strong enough to carry through although he'd ached for every one. He had made himself so alone, because that, too, had been necessary... but at the end, he was Wraeththu. Alone, lonely, he lacked the strength to take the final step.

I could turn him from this path, I thought. It wouldn't have taken much. He still loved life, still enjoyed his flesh. All he needed was a reason, and he would fight with all his strength to prevent what had to happen. Even fight hard enough to guarantee Wraeththu's destruction -- if not now, then generations into the future. 

I looked at him and he smiled wearily. Such were the matters with which he struggled every day. His every decision had implications for the future, for our people. He was more than strong enough to bear the weight, and I had no right to try and take it from him.

But there were other things I could take: terror, loneliness, pain. He had not been soume in years, but I sang to him of tenderness and protection and he became female for me, submitting and welcoming. In the sky above us I could see that tornado again, a vortex of fire with darkness inside, but now I could see beyond the darkness to the star at its heart. The darkness did not frighten me anymore; I was equal to it. Indeed, it welcomed me in, enveloping and enfolding, damp and slippery and powerful. Gripped by it I shot toward the star, reaching out to stroke it once, twice, a third time. Around me the flames exploded, hot but not searing; he writhed and howled and the only music in his voice was the familiar, welcome song of ecstasy.

When that was done and we had rested, he sat up and turned me over, and this time the song was his to sing. I had crossed a world for this Song, pushed my body and soul to the limit. The music of Thiede is command and love -- yes, love, although of a different order from what most hara experience. This time, however, the love was intimate, the command a plea in disguise. He had only to ask. I opened up to him so freely that he had no need to coax the seal. Indeed, it was I who coaxed, for at the last he hesitated, unsure of whether this was the right thing. I told him with my soul that it was, and sang to him of the future, and he gifted me with the essence of himself. It would have killed me if I'd been weaker, so powerful was it, but I was powerful too, and between us we could make a miracle. I closed myself around his seed, wrapped myself around his body, and we both wept as we listened to the music of conception. It was the most beautiful harmony either of us had ever heard.

***

There was little to be said or done, afterward. The song and that one glorious night of aruna had been enough. I wanted to stay, but I knew better. Instead, I went into the city, sang to a standing crowd for money and got myself a room, and waited. The next night the upheaval came and I felt it when he slipped free of his flesh and became something more. I did not weep, though I could not keep myself from grieving. Selfish of me, I know, when I could feel him all around us. And when every day I could feel the small positioning movements of life within me. Just a pearl, like any other. I was doing nothing more than what aeons of women and one generation of hara had done. Still, it pleased me that something of his physical self would survive and go on. A different kind of immortality. Just because he got the other kind too didn't mean it was greedy of him to want both.

He fathered an entire race; every har is his child. But he too was har, and it would have been wrong in the extreme for him to leave this world, to become our god, knowing nothing of things so quintessential to our existence. Parenthood: it is our greatest gift, and though he will miss the best part of it, that's all right. He got a taste. Chesnabond: we didn't perform the ceremony of blood, but some things transcend ritual. And Grissecon, of a kind. He had the power on his own, but now he has mine, too. Together they are enough to carry him through eternity.

And I have my Song. Now that the turmoil has settled and the Hegalion has announced that the Tigron and Tigrina have become three people, everyone loves my music. It gives them courage and hope; it is Thiede's gift to them, through me. Already I have sung to a packed house in the Omnion; Gelaming appreciate an artist even more than the Ferike, and of course they have never heard anything like me before. I think I shall find a house for myself, here in Immanion. Someplace green, where the stone shines but the shadows also linger. I will bring my son into the world there. I will give him a name of strength -- but not too much. He will not be his father. He does not have to be, thank the Aghama.

But I do hope he can carry a tune.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this aaaaaaaaages ago, before Constantine's trilogy became more. It was posted back then on the Wraeththu ML, so if this looks familiar, congratulations! You've got a great memory.


End file.
